The Devil's Paw eBook

“I realise the position perfectly,” Mr.
Stenson observed drily. “I do not exactly
know what to say to you personally, Orden,” he
added. “Perhaps it is as well for us that
the Council should have chosen an ambassador with
whom discussion, at any rate, is possible. Nevertheless,
I feel bound to remind you that you have taken upon
your shoulders, considering your birth and education,
one of the most perilous loads which any man could
carry.”

“I have weighed the consequences,” Julian
replied, with a sudden and curious sadness in his
tone. “I know how the name of `pacifist’
stinks in the nostrils. I know how far we are
committed as a nation to a peace won by force of arms.
I know how our British blood boils at the thought
of leaving a foreign country with as many military
advantages as Germany has acquired. But I feel,
too, that there is the other side. I have brought
you evidence that it is not the German nation against
whom we fight, man against man, human being against
human being. It is my belief that autocracy
and the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns will crumble
into ruin as a result of today’s negotiations,
just as surely as though we sacrificed God knows how
many more lives to achieve a greater measure of military
triumph.”

The Prime Minister rang the bell.

“You are an honest man, Julian Orden,”
he said, “and a decent emissary. You will
reply that we take the twenty-four hours for reflection.
That means that we shall meet at nine o’clock
to-morrow evening.”

He held out his hand in farewell, an action which
somehow sent Julian away a happier man.

CHAPTER XVII

Julian, on, the morning following his visit to the
Prime Minister, was afflicted with a curious and persistent
unrest. He travelled down to the Temple land
found Miles Furley in a room hung with tobacco smoke
and redolent of a late night.

“Miles,” Julian declared, as the two men
shook hands, “I can’t rest.”

“I am in the same fix,” Furley admitted.
“I sat here till four o’clock.
Phineas Cross came around, and half-a-dozen of the
others. I felt I must talk to them, I must keep
on hammering it out. We’re right, Julian.
We must be right!”

“It’s a ghastly responsibility.
I wonder what history will have to say.”

“That’s the worst of it,” Furley
groaned. “They’ll have a bird’s-eye
view of the whole affair, those people who write our
requiem or our eulogy. You noticed the Press
this morning? They’re all hinting at some
great move in the West. It’s about in
the clubs. Why, I even heard last night that
we were in Ostend. It’s all a rig, of course.
Stenson wants to gain time.”

“Who opened these negotiations with Freistner?”
Julian asked.

“Fenn. He met him at the Geneva Conference,
the year before the war. I met him, too, but
I didn’t see so much of him. He’s
a fine fellow, Julian—­as unlike the typical
German as any man you ever met.”